Week in review

Quote of the week

“[M]ost people will go along with pretty much anything the government spins as being in the ‘public interest’… and keep going along until they wake up one morning to find they live in the equivalent of a well-decorated prison camp.” – David Galland

“What the TSA’s reign of terror must teach us is the lesson we’ve been pushing here at Antiwar.com since our inception: that you can have an empire engaged in continuous warfare, or you can have your freedom – but you cannot have both.” more…

“America was a Garden of Eden with nothing but flowers, trees and vegetation. We bit into the forbidden fruit of oil over a century ago. It has been a deal with the Devil. Oil brought immense wealth, rapid industrialization, 2.7 million miles of paved roads, and enormous power to America. But, now the SUV is running on empty. In the not too distant future the downside of the deal with the Devil will reveal itself. America was the land of the free and home of the brave. Now it is the land of the Range Rover and home of the BMW. In a few years it could be the land of the forlorn and home of the broken down. Our entire society has been built upon a foundation of cheap oil. The discovery of oil in Titusville, PA in 1859 turbo charged the Industrial Revolution in the U.S. The development of our sprawling suburban culture was dependent upon cheap oil. Americans could not survive for a week without oil. Commerce in the U.S. depends upon long haul truckers. Food is transported thousands of miles to grocery stores. The cheap Wal-Mart crap is transported thousands of miles across the seas from China. Americans believe it is our God given right to cheap oil.” more…

by Julian Sanchez “What worries liberals about progressive indexing, and about the shift to a more overtly welfare-like Social Security system, is that welfare benefits tend to be politically unpopular—and much easier to cut than benefits perceived as universal. Social Security, in other words, is a massive Rube Goldberg device, an ornate and utterly superfluous system of transfers from the middle and upper classes to themselves, the sole purpose of which is to construct—and conceal—a much smaller welfare machine for elderly retirees nestled deep in the guts of the meta-contraption. Some defenders of the status quo are now attempting—though they scarcely seem to believe it themselves—to argue that Social Security is no less vital for the middle class. But corner a progressive over a quiet drink and he’ll probably admit that, in fact, the only defensible purpose of Social Security is to ensure that nobody retires in poverty. There may be political reasons for cutting a monthly check to Bill Gates when he turns 65, but there are no sane policy reasons.” more…

“In the last few weeks, Facebook and Google have been engaging in a public tussle over an issue that is near and dear to EFF’s heart: data portability. The crux of the issue is that when you sign up for Facebook, you can find your Gmail contacts or invite them to join the social networking service with a few quick clicks. But when you sign up for Google, Facebook prevents you from easily inviting all of your Facebook friends to Google, despite the fact that Facebook makes it easy for users to export their contacts to other services like Yahoo!.” more…

Other News

Excellent cartoon explanation of Quantitative Easing. If nothing else, watch this (6:48). “Because the printing money is the last refuge of failed economic empires and banana republics and the Fed does not want to admit this is their only idea.”

And now the numbers…

Or not…. I’m having trouble with my internet connection and so my script that would typically extract data from my Google spreadsheet and format the data is unavailable. Instead you can look at the numbers here. That links is always good.

Not too much going on this week other than the normal busyness. One thing, I’ve managed to drop from 200 pounds to about 187 over the last couple or few months. It’s amazing what a consistent regimen of push-ups, pull-ups, squats, and isometric ab exercises will do when combined with some dietary discipline. I’m actually a fair amount stronger too, so that’s another perk.

Wow, it’s barely 11 o’clock and I am tired. So I’m going to just wrap it up. Breakfast tomorrow at Classic Cup Cafe on Jackson Road in Ann Arbor at 8AM.